There's nothing like receiving a very large and unexpected bequest to grab leadership's attention. Such was the case about seven years ago, when a small regional university finally decided to formalize its planned giving program. Up to that point, the marketing of its planned giving program was inconsistent and the attention it received from development was sporadic. The realized bequest was the catalyst to pay more attention to this planned giving thing.
It's been a slow building process, but over the years the Director of Advancement has identified a planned giving prospect pool for marketing outreach. The organization sends an electronic planned giving newsletter three times a year. In the last two years, they have changed their message which is now softer, mission focused, and less technical. They also send out two direct mail pieces, one a self-mailer and the other a letter. It's as much as they can handle, given all the other advancement mailings that occur. Like good marketers, they have identified all of the areas where they can include a planned giving message in their advancement material: advertorials in their alumni magazine, inserts in acknowledgement receipts, planned giving post scripts in the 50th reunion correspondence. They have also learned that marketing is only one way to generate leads. They have instituted a quarterly planned giving portfolio meeting to identify strategies for moving the planned giving discussion forward with their key donors.
At our last meeting with this client, we discussed how the planned giving program was doing overall. They were happy with the number of CGAs they had received, but the Director was disappointed in his bequest notifications. "Our planned giving activity is up. We have received four calls from estate attorneys recently telling us their clients are putting us in their will, but they just won't disclose." One would think this was good news, but my client was dismayed because he couldn't "count" this in his report to management.
Metrics can be a tricky subject. When it comes to counting - what is public versus internal counting and how to credit the gift officers - no two organizations are alike. It was disheartening to hear of the Director's disappointment when learned that the donors of these potential bequests wished to remain anonymous. He was taken aback when I told him that indeed he could count these - it's just an additional category that he needed to report.
At that time, this university only reported known bequests, but a category of bequests intentions (anonymous) which can be tied to correspondence with the attorney is also acceptable. I explained that they needed to make a shift and measure and report activity, not just the dollars. Planned giving has such a long tail, that to focus only on the annual revenue is short sighted. There are other activities that should be reported internally, whether it's qualified leads, visits or substantive conversations, proposals, as well as the more tangible goals such as legacy society members, number of life income gifts, etc.
I explained to the Director not only could he count the "intention," but with some extra effort he could also assign a gift amount in order to have a more accurate bequest pipeline. Many organizations follow this practice. If an organization has enough history, we recommend it revisit the last 5-10 years of estate administration records to determine the average realized bequest. Some will remove the outliers for a more conservative number, but regardless, it’s a more realistic picture of the value of a planned giving program to the organization.
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